How the Composite Works

Collectors pull each market’s best available data every morning — exchange APIs (crypto, prediction venues), marketplace feeds (Empire Flippers, Collector Crypt, WhiskyInvestDirect’s cask order book), price guides (SportsCardsPro), published indices (Liv-ex 100, IDEX diamonds, Zillow top-tier), auction results (Bring a Trailer), public-market proxies (BIZD for private credit, FLUT/DKNG for the betting economy), and regulatory filings (SEC EDGAR). Every observation is stored under its true observation date — a monthly index prints monthly, and the freshness badges on the board disclose exactly that. Slow reports (M&A totals, DST fundraising, diamond and venture indices) are extracted from source PDFs by a language model that must quote the sentence containing each number; code rejects anything outside plausibility bounds, and the quote is logged for audit.

Each market’s sub-index starts at 100 on the first day its data exists. Daily return = the equal-weighted mean of its constituents’ daily changes (metals averages gold, silver, platinum, palladium; NFTs average four blue-chip floors), chained forward. Series are forward-filled between prints, so a monthly market contributes zero return on quiet days and its true move on print day — never an invented daily wiggle.

Weights are computed, not chosen: weight ∝ √(market size) × activity, normalized to 100 with a 12% cap per market. Size is each market’s best-documented dollar value — stock (value held, preferred) or flow×10 (a stated turnover assumption where only annual volume exists, flagged per market). Activity grades how the market trades today (high 1.3 / medium 1.0 / low 0.7) — live two-sided markets get precedence over episodic ones. Three thematic sleeves — Cultural Assets, Financial Alternatives, Hard Assets — are groupings whose weights emerge as the sum of their members, and each is published as its own sub-index. Sizes come from named institutional sources (Deloitte, Preqin, Hagerty, Zillow, Jefferies, Market Decipher) and refresh annually.

Daily composite return = the weight-renormalized mean of live sub-index returns. Markets with at least 180 days of history anchor the start date; younger markets join mid-stream at their own data start via renormalization — a source that went live yesterday can never rewrite history. A market enters only after proving itself: 30 daily observations (or 6 monthly) — where a source publishes history we backfill instead, so the gate only delays sources with no past. Currently 11 of 32 markets are live (64.39999999999999 of 100.39999999999998 weights); the rest are reserved seats that join automatically as their sources mature, each labeled with what it awaits.

A deterministic signal engine ranks unusual moves (z-scores against each series’ own trailing distribution, plus raw magnitude; at most one candidate per market). Three independent models — Claude, GPT, and Grok — then judge identical evidence packs on a fixed rubric: real move or artifact, plausible drivers, conviction, and one falsifiable claim. Publication requires two-of-three consensus, computed in code; disagreements are published as open questions rather than suppressed. The daily Latest News feed blends these data moves with a live news sweep across every covered market; external items carry their publication’s name, and the prose is written last from the panel output and computed stats only.

Every consensus flag is logged the day it’s made — series, stats, conviction, claims. Thirty days later, code grades it: did the move persist? The running hit rate and average forward return will be published here, wins and losses alike. Flags are never edited or removed after the fact.

This is a provisional index and says so on its face. Public-market proxies (BDC funds for private credit, operator equities for sports betting) carry equity beta their private markets don’t. Auction medians (cars) are mix-sensitive day to day. Flow×10 sizing is an assumption, not a measurement. Fine art has a reserved seat because no honest free price series exists — we’d rather show an empty seat than a fabricated number. A standing monthly audit reviews these choices and its notes inform each revision. The Index reports markets; nothing here is investment advice.